


Seventeen: A Kiss in the Rain (All Through The Night)

by Terrantalen



Series: Tumblr Ficlets [3]
Category: The Mighty Boosh RPF
Genre: A Kiss In The Rain, Boys Get Soaking Wet, M/M, Romance, Tumblr ficlet, When Prompts Turn Into Epic Prompts, kiss kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:13:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29861373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Terrantalen/pseuds/Terrantalen
Summary: The first time they kiss is for a crowd.
Relationships: Julian Barratt/Noel Fielding
Series: Tumblr Ficlets [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2195373
Kudos: 7
Collections: Trash Triplets Present (to our own surprise): The Completely Spontaneous Kiss Kiss Week Collection





	Seventeen: A Kiss in the Rain (All Through The Night)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starsonthebrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starsonthebrow/gifts).



The first time they kiss is for a crowd.

They’re in a pub after a gig. Julian has four lagers in him and is on his way back to the table with a fifth. Noel is walking next to him, bobbing through the crowd. It’s busy. A Friday night, a small pub with too many tables, and too many people in, but it was raining when they finished the show and this place is closer than their usual, so they decided to give it a go.

Some of the people in here followed them from the gig, not many, but it’s still a bit amazing. Not just the ones that Noel and Julian know, either. People neither of them have ever met before keep coming up to chat, to say nice things, which is, again, a bit amazing. Last year, all they’d been getting were a lot of blank stares.

It feels like something, a turning point, maybe. The show they’ve been babying is starting to get legs under it. Julian is relieved, and Noel is happy, and following him around like a puppy, up to the bar and then back to their table every time Julian goes. 

It’s half because Julian is a bit pissed, and half because some bloke takes a step back right into his path that he stumbles over his own feet. He narrowly avoids spilling his pint when he catches himself on Noel’s shoulder.

Noel’s hand closes around Julian’s wrist. “Easy,” he says with a laugh.

Julian leans on him, but Noel is the one who slides under his arm seamlessly, who smiles and pats Julian’s stomach, and says something too softly for Julian to properly hear. He hears the tone, though. Pleased and warm. Julian feels Noel’s voice sneak its way into his chest. He doesn’t know what he’s said, but he knows it’s good; he feels it just under his ribs.

They’re about three quarters of the way back to their table when someone says it. _Just fucking snog him already_. Julian looks toward the back of the room, toward where their mates are sitting in a u-shaped booth, and he sees the faces turned toward him and Noel, sees Lee grinning at them.

Us, he thinks. They’re talking about us.

Julian huffs a laugh, used to the ribbing by now. Pretty much since he and Noel started together, people have been saying things. Julian has had enough time to sort through the things they’ve said and he’s decided how he feels about them. Mostly, they make him feel a whole lot of _piss off_.

It’s not anyone’s business, what he does or doesn’t do with Noel, what he wants to do with Noel… or not.

But, the thing is, Noel is right next to him, holding onto him, and Julian has a degree of plausible deniability from being pissed, and fuck, he isn’t pursuing a career in comedy because he doesn’t like to perform. They are _all_ watching, and it’s like being up at the top of a steep hill with a bike when your mates are down at the bottom, egging you on.

He wants to do it. It’d shock them. Shut them up. He wants to kiss Noel in front of them and show them he’s not bothered, and maybe that’s not the only reason he wants to do it. In fact, he knows it’s not.

That’s why he stops and looks under his arm.

Noel is peering up at him.

His eyes are fucking huge, with long, curving lashes, blue enough to make the sky jealous, able to manage sweet and mischievous at the same time. His ridiculous, flattened nose and high cheekbones are softened by the dim light in the pub. His pink lips are quirked up in a dare. Anyone could be confused by that face. There’s so much going on.

A lot going on, but Julian can still guess what Noel’s expression means. _Go on, then. It’s just a kiss. It’ll be a laugh._

It’ll be a laugh.

Yeah, it _will_ be a laugh, and fuck it, why the hell not?

He leans down and kisses Noel on the lips.

Julian is a bit surprised when Noel opens his mouth, and a bit more surprised when he finds himself diving right in like they’ve done this a thousand times, like they both know what it is they’re doing ( _having a laugh_ , his brain absently supplies over his jackhammering pulse) and even more surprised when he feels something cold and wet seeping into his clothes. It’s weird, sure, but he’s prepared to go with it, until he remembers his pint.

He breaks out of the kiss. Noel is giggling a bit. His shirt is plastered against his skin. Beer pools on the floor at their feet.

Julian looks at the now half-empty glass he’s holding. “Fuck.”

“I just got this shirt,” Noel says, plucking at himself. The wet fabric tents and then sucks back against his skin when he lets it go.

“Sorry,” Julian says to his own chest. He downs the rest of his pint, mostly to get it out of the way.

Noel grabs a handful of napkins off the table next to them and starts patting himself down. He takes another handful and passes them to Julian.

Julian dabs himself off to the sound of laughs and applause. “Happy?” he shouts at Lee.

Lee scoffs at him, “Smooth, Barratt!” he shouts back. “I don’t think that’s how you’re meant to get your girlfriend wet, mate!”

Noel shoots Lee a two-fingered salute, but he’s laughing. Julian laughs too. Noel takes the empty glass and the sodden napkins off him and then he disappears into the crowd and Julian is left to stumble toward the table alone.

He sits down and waits for someone to say something, but all anyone wants to talk about is Julian dumping the pint on himself and Noel, and there isn’t even one mention of how they just fucking kissed. It’s like it didn’t happen. Julian only knows it did because he can still feel it. The kiss. Noel’s lips, his tongue.

Julian looks through the crowd for him, wants him next to him, where he should be, so that he can see if it’s something Noel is thinking about too.

When he finally appears, it doesn’t look like Noel has anything on his mind. He just sits down on the other side of the table and slides Julian another pint, but Julian has had enough. He slides it to Lee instead; he’s only been staring at an empty glass for the past twenty minutes, clearly thinking of his shit car and the crack in the radiator that wants fixing.

“Cheers,” Lee says, tipping the glass toward Julian and then at Noel.

Here it comes, Julian thinks. Lee will make a comment, say something, but he doesn’t. He just sips his charity pint, and the conversation drifts, and drifts, and drifts, until Julian gives up hope. It’s like none of them even realize that something massive has happened.

He looks over at Noel to see if _he_ at least realizes, but it doesn’t seem like he does. He’s chatting away, laughing and being laughed at, and the night abruptly stops being fun.

He waits until Noel gets up to go to the bog and then Julian says his goodbyes. He grabs his jacket and shrugs into it on his way out the door.

The rain is coming down in sheets. He considers turning around and going back inside to wait it out, but then he thinks about Noel, and Noel’s thin shoulder jammed into his armpit, and the smell of his skin, and he just can’t.

He walks toward his flat with his shoulders hunched against the weather. Cars pass, windscreen wipers on full tilt, and spray water at him. The rain wets his hair, slides down the back of his neck and into the collar of his shirt. Dampness slowly spreads between his shoulder blades. His trousers stick to his thighs, then the rain soaks through his jacket. He smells beer in the wet air and he frowns down at the pavements.

It was just a laugh. That’s what they did it for, and they did laugh, didn’t they?

Yeah. They had.

It’s fine, or will be fine, once he’s sobered up and slept, had a shower and some breakfast. It’ll get put into context. It won’t feel like this once he’s got a bit of perspective on it.

He stops at a crossing and waits for the signal to turn, staring down at the wheels of the passing cars.

He hears hard heels striking the pavements and he turns toward the sound at the same time Noel calls out to him.

“Julian!” he says, jogging up to him. “Christ. I got up for five minutes, came back, and you’d gone.”

He stops, flushed and slightly out of breath, with rain sticking his hair down in a way that Julian is sure Noel would never normally stand for.

The crossing turns, but Julian doesn’t go anywhere. He tucks his hands into his pockets. “I felt tired,” he says.

“Kind of a big night, yeah,” Noel says, nodding.

“A good show,” Julian agrees. The walk sign starts to flash, and he steps out into the street before he misses his chance.

Noel follows him. He hops the curb just behind Julian, then stops. He turns side-on, looks over his shoulder and fidgets, perhaps remembering that his flat is actually in the other direction, and Julian’s is about another half-mile away.

He’s soaked through, same as Julian is, only he’s shivering because he’s so goddamned small. Julian feels the what were you thinking? forming on his lips, but he doesn’t say it.

Noel looks at him, and it’s all there on his face.

He came after him, he realizes. To say a line about a good show and then fuck off home? No. As much as Noel lives in the moment, he doesn’t decide to sprint down a street in the pouring rain just because he wants to hear Julian say something he already knows.

He came after him for something else.

Julian swallows. “Sorry I spilled all that beer on you.”

Noel looks up at him. His face goes blank for a single, nerve-wracking second and then he smiles. “S’alright,” he says. “I didn’t mind.”

“Spoiled your shirt, though.”

“Nah,” Noel says. “It’s a t-shirt, isn’t it? It’ll wash out. Anyway, this weather’s kind of a pre-wash. It’s pissing.”

Julian nods.

They’re alone on the street corner. Cars pass them by, headlights and taillights; white, red, green from the traffic signal above, and blue, from Noel’s eyes. A few colors short of a rainbow, but near enough.

Noel’s smile dims. Julian would give anything to know what he’s thinking.

His eyes drop to Julian’s lips at the same time that he licks his own, and Julian takes a guess. He reaches. Noel leans.

The second time they kiss is right there, on the street corner, with Noel’s face cradled in Julian’s hands and damp clothes clinging to their fronts.

They kiss and it already feels familiar, the feel of Noel’s breath against his cheek, the press of his narrow body, his jawbone sharp against Julian’s thumbs, the way they fall together, knowing and not knowing at the same time. It’s utterly terrifying. It feels right. It’s jumping without knowing where, or if, they’ll land, but they’re together. For what that’s worth, they are doing this together. They can do it, can be this, if they both just want it enough.

This time, when he pulls away, Noel’s face is still tipped up toward him. His eyes are shut, like he’s dreaming about something good. When he opens his eyes, Julian can see him wondering.

He keeps hold of Julian’s jacket, stays standing close enough for Julian to see drops of rain beading and then sliding down his chin. “What are we doing, Ju?” he whispers, like he thinks Julian will know.

Julian feels a desire to protect him, a desire not to disappoint him. “Think you’re coming to my flat,” he says. “Think you might spend the night. Use my laundry, at least.”

“Okay,” Noel says. His brow wrinkles. “And…?”

Julian leans forward and kisses him again, soft, gentle, an easy pull. “We’ll see,” he says against Noel’s lips.

Noel smiles as though that’s good enough. Julian hopes it is. It’s the best he can do. He gathers Noel under his arm and they walk the rest of the way to his flat like that, in the pouring rain.

**Author's Note:**

> For the lovely starsonthebrow. This prompt ate my soul a bit. Much love, friend!


End file.
